Addictions and Distractions
by AbominableDante
Summary: Remus remembers the dark times before Voldemort's fall from power.


**Author's Notes: **I wrote this so long ago…I don't know why I never bothered to put it up. Really, I'm rather fond of this story, even if it's an often retold one.

Bjork roxors...

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or the characters therin. Really, I'm just having fun.

**Warnings: **Yaoi…sorta. Nothing explicit. Oh, but I'm sure there is some cursing.

* * *

"Can't you put that blasted thing out? You'll ruin your lungs."

I looked up from my typewriter and over my glasses at my dark-haired flat mate, my very best friend. He looked like he had just gotten up, his hair still standing halfway on end, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth like the cigarette than hung from mine. He frowned, my fingers still on the keys, stopped mid-sentence.

"If I was worried about that, do you think I'd be smoking?" I asked, figuring it was too early to be nice about his daily ragging routine. He glowered over at me, not at all frightening.

"You'll ruin my lungs," he corrected as he pulled the white stick from my mouth and stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray. "You think I like kissing someone who tastes like this half the time?"

"You smoke," I countered, hackled raised.

"Not half as much as you do, Rem. You're a bleeding chimney the moment you wake up to bedtime, even in meals. Don't you worry about cancer or something?"

I snorted and sat back in my desk chair, propping my feet on the dark wood top beside my typewriter. I wanted very much to throw him out; I was in the middle of something, a rather good swing of creativeness. I couldn't, though; he'd only make a racket.

"Me, cancer? My dear Sirius, cancer fears me, not the other way around. I'm blinking invincible."

"You're blinking drunk, is what you are. What did I tell you about starting this early?"

I shrug and turn away, back to the page on which I was typing. I easily tap into the sphere of the world I was developing, languidly painting the landscape with words. Such a beautiful world, a world that could never exist. I enjoyed this form of escapism. I wanted to finish my cigarette.

"Remus…"

I'm ignoring you…

"Remus!"

I'm not home right now, but I'll give you a biscuit if you leave a message.

Sirius threw up his hands and stalked off, muttering to himself. I looked over into the hallway, watching him leave. He turned the corner into our bedroom and I quietly shut the door.

No need for any more distractions.

* * *

Sirius is one of the useless rich. He doesn't have a job and refuses to take the role of a housewife and clean up after himself and me when I'm on a bender, like today. He is lying across the couch in the living room with his arm over his eyes, soaking in the sunlight that pours through the window and dusty air and the crackling music from our record player. It's something jazz and I cringe. I loathe jazz.

His chest is rising and falling slowly, I know he's asleep and I shouldn't bother him. The poor man didn't get much sleep last night or the nights before, but he looks so tempting there, naked from the waist up, where his jeans are unbuttoned on the first button and resting around his hips like they belong there. I want to taste the flesh on those bony hips, his elbows, his knees. He's as gangly as I am because he doesn't eat enough.

We aren't starving, but I have the nasty habit of eating everything I see. High metabolism.

I smile at him and turn back to my typewriter. My muse is sleeping right now, but I could do some editing…

"My God, this is good!" my editor says over the line. I can hear her shuffling through the two hundred pages of my final draft. "Where on earth did you get the idea for this story?"

I shrug, though I know she can't see it, and my eyes look over at Sirius, who is sleepily considering his cereal. I hand him a spoon and he smiles slightly in thanks.

"People I know, I suppose…"

"This is going to be a hit. You'll be rolling naked in royalties in no time!"

Only she would have that fantasy. I'd rather be stuffing it into a mattress with both hands and taking the whole thing and myself out of this shithole my landlord has the nerve to call an apartment.

"When will it be published?" I ask, leaning against the wall by the phone.

"Three weeks is as fast as I could get the printers to do it. Five hundred copies in three weeks. We'll make more as soon as those pick up enough sales."

I don't know anything about the publishing business, but five hundred is not a big enough number for me to consider a success. My excitement fails me and I can feel my eyelid beginning to twitch. I rub it and sigh. Sirius looks up at me and raises an eyebrow. I don't sigh like that very often.

"Is there a problem?" my editor asks.

"Not at all." I can't wait until sales pick up, we have bills. "Good day, then."

My editor returns it and I hang up. She agitates me, but it's too much trouble to find another. I slump into a kitchen chair across from Sirius and point to his bowl.

"Eat, Sirius."

He eats quickly, tilting the bowl up to get the last of the milk before handing it to me to put in the sink. I don't feel like cleaning today. Maybe tomorrow. My foot bumps into his, and then crawls up inside his pant leg.

He looks up at me, eyes smoky, and licks his lips.

"Want something?" he asks huskily.

I'm practically crawling over the table at that voice. The man has got me on a bleeding string when he looks at me like that. His voice goes straight to my groin.

I merely smile, if a bit savagely.

* * *

I let loose a soft cry and collapse over Sirius, who is still caught in the last of his release. I feel the warm come on my stomach and I sigh. There is something comforting about buggering one's best friend senseless, like the knowledge that sex is always the same no matter what Dark Lord is trying to demolish the world.

I snuffle along his jaw and in his damp hair, savoring his scent. As much as we fight, we have great makeup sex. At least he isn't still mad about earlier this week…

"Mmm…Remus…"

His voice is the best aphrodisiac in the entire world. If only he'd stop talking, we could get some sleep. He groans when he feels me already recovering.

And I had really wanted to go to sleep…

"You're like a bloody rabbit, Remmy," he laughs quietly and I shutter at the sound. It's perfect, so perfect…

"Wrascally Wrabbit," I say against his ear, nipping it gently. He laughs again.

"I'm tired, Remus…"

"I am too, but you wouldn't be so cruel to leave me like this all by myself, now would you?" I whine prettily. I pull back to see his reaction and he smiles, his blue eyes drooping half closed as he lounges against the pillows.

He looks down at me and raises an eyebrow. I recover very quickly, you see.

"I want you, Sirius," I add, my voice deep with lust. I do, again and again and again until it bloody falls off.

And probably sometime after that…

He surges forward quicker than I thought he would and presses his mouth to mine. I can barely think to breathe, my nostrils widen for air but my head still lacking it.

Every time he kisses me I think I might faint on the spot.

"Of course you do," Sirius says smugly. He wouldn't have it any other way. "But I want top now."

I frown, unwilling to give up my position as the dominant one. It isn't that I dislike it, quite the opposite; it just goes against my nature. Sirius gives up so much to be with me, though, that I cannot refuse. I sigh and tumble off of him onto my back, the sheets twisted underneath me.

He is on me a second later, quick to take up my usual role, settling between my legs and leaning over me on his arms, muscles corded. My hands stroll up those arms and across his chest, flick his nipples. He sucks air, completely awake now, and leans into my touch.

Tongues swap saliva and his flavor bursts in my mouth like overripe fruit. The muscle slicks over teeth and against the roof of his mouth and he moans into me. One hand is skimming down my side, my thigh and under my knee, lifting it up and over his waist. That same hand flutters over my opening and I gasp, leaning my head back to break the kiss for more air, but Sirius follows me and doesn't release me.

I am a mass of quivering sensations now, unable to think coherently and unwilling to care about it. All I want is Sirius inside of me, now, before I faint from pleasure.

His finger circles my entrance, but doesn't press inside. I can barely stand any more teasing without biting his tongue off when he breaks the kiss and sucks on my neck, just below my ear. I squirm and moan and plead for him, but he ignores me. He likes to keep me wanting.

"Please, Sirius…" I beg, my fingers scrabbling over his back as if to convince him. My fingernails dig crescents into his muscles, but he pays them no heed, used to any pain I might cause him. Sex with werewolves can be near violent sometimes. Sometimes he enjoys it.

"'Please, Sirius' what?" he teases, "How may I help you, Remmy-dear?"

I groan at his voice, like a caress itself, all up and down the underside of my sex. It is raw and heady and I nearly cry for more.

"Touch me…"

He smiles softly against my skin and obliges, his finger sinking knuckle-deep without resistance. I groan again and he presses deeper, then twists his finger and crooks it up. My back arches immediately, my head thrown back and my mouth open in an 'O'. My eyes stare at the ceiling and all I can see are shadows my mind plays across the white background. I shut them and try to breathe.

Sirius leans over me again, nipping on my jaw, then up to my lips, nearly devouring the whole of me insides out, like one would empty a grape from its skin. The suction is intolerable. His other hand is crawling slowly up my sex, like a spider ghosting her legs across the coarse hairs and deep skin.

"I'm tired, Remus, can we get this over with?" he sighs into my ear. I can hear it and I almost take pity on him. He is only human. Staying up night after night with me is what brought those dark bruises to his eyes, starched his face with early wrinkles around his eyes and the corners of his lips, the wrinkles I find so endearing. What can I say, I like my lovers both a little refined and a little wild. Sirius is becoming that, once I get him to take up painting again…

Later…

I'm busy now.

"Yes," I can only hiss, my sharp teeth bared against the thin skin of his throat. I fight the urge to open my jaws and sink my opal-white fangs into the milky skin provided, to possess that perfect form, that slightly deranged mind.

I already have, though. Sirius is already irreversibly mine. We have been drawn to one another since our youth, since our first kiss and coupling, since…

Oh God…

Whatever thoughts I hold scatter as I reach my climax, spewing white as my eyes blank to a colorless world. This is how the blind see, I think, without knowing what sight is. It isn't understandable to those of us who can see. I do not pity them, but I briefly lust for their knowledge of the world in their own differentness.

I open my eyes again and Sirius is already curling up on his side, drifting to sleep. He was kind enough to clean me up…

I slowly spoon against him, tucking my chin over his shoulder and wrapping one arm over his waist. He only purrs.

I didn't know dogs purred.

* * *

My book is on the shelves now and the Order has finally completed the last inductions. Sirius and I were among the first to join, and the waiting for other members to come along nearly drove us mad. Sirius's parents and family were all Death Eaters, and all vicious and so unlike him. He grew up in that hell and he wants no other child to go through what he went through, some of his secrets so dark that he hasn't even told me.

I just want to find my sire. I want to find him and I want to kill him in the most brutal way I can. I want to tear his throat out with my jaws and rip his corpse to shreds so that even the gods won't recognize him in the underworld.

The wolfish half of me stirs with the though of violence and the pit in my stomach warms me against the chill of the house. It's a feeling I can only associate as pleasure, something just short of orgasm that lies curled comfortably in my gut.

I am struggling the last layers over my head, a second battered sweater and warm trousers before settling my beaten tweed over my shoulders and grab for my briefcase, equally worn. Sirius is waiting for me by the door, looking a little sad that I won't let him come but understanding why I must go. I turn to him and he throws a scarf over my head and ties it around my throat. He smiles down at me, his eyes somehow stern.

"Come back to me whole," he orders. I nod, but he won't let me go.

"Swear it."

"I swear, Sirius. I'll come back," I reassure and he lets me go. I lean in for a goodbye kiss; his lips are wet and soft and I want nothing more than to let the world screw itself and carry him back to bed. "So long as you'll be here waiting for me."

"Of course I will, Moony," he laughs. My heart melts into my toes and that pleasurable feeling in my stomach comes back again.

"I love you."

"Love you."

I have no idea how long I'll be away or where I'll be going. Wherever it is, I know my heart will break at our separation. It already has.

* * *

Six months tracking werewolves across Europe and I am home at last with no information and more than just a bloody nose. I nearly collapse on our doorstep, but I manage to knock first and hold myself up long enough to smile into Sirius's surprised eyes.

I black out a moment later.

When I come to, I am sore and sick. My throat has closed against all utterances and my head is throbbing almost enough to hide the various aches in my joints and the burning of my injuries. Sirius is busying himself in the kitchen, my ears tell me, perked to his footsteps, ones I've been longing for longer than I can remember. 

He comes in, a tray in his hands and he sets it on the nightstand softly. He looks down at me, worried, but glad I am awake.

"You've been asleep for two days, Remmy. You were bleeding so much I had to call the doctor in. But your bleeding has stopped now, thank Merlin. You've got a fever, so you need to relax, heal. And none of that business about werewolves healing inhumanly fast, either."

I didn't feel like arguing with him. If I never saw another werewolf again it would be too soon.

There was more for me to heal than just cuts and bruises anyway. My nerves were shot.

I let Sirius press a cool cloth to my forehead and whisper to me about what he had been doing for the Order. I sank back into sleep with the sound of his voice.

My den. My home. My mate. For the first time in months, I felt safe.

* * *

James and Lily were having a baby. Sirius knew about it, but this was the first I'd seen the two in half a year. Lily's belly was already swelling, round with motherhood and she smelled of dual scents now, dual life forces. The sensation was calming, as the woman practically radiated protective comfort. She and Molly Weasley were so alike…no wonder they got on so well.

I pressed my hand to her stomach and waited for the child to kick while Sirius and James caught up on events and rumors and Order whispers. I helped Lily with the supper as best I could, unwilling to sit still even if all I could do was limp around the kitchen and stir the potatoes.

"So, what do you think it will be?" Sirius asked Lily when we had sat down to supper, his hand clasped in mine under the tablecloth.

Lily only smiled and James shrugged. They had no idea. The Muggle MRI's weren't very dependable and sorcery techniques doctors used weren't always pleasant.

I took a deep breath and shut my eyes to decipher them. Lily, James and Sirius waited for me to speak, though I had kept quiet most of the night. My voice had not yet healed completely, so speaking was difficult.

"A boy," I said surely, smiling across the table at their radiant faces.

A second wave of 'knowing' washed over me and my stomach jumped into my throat.

A sweat broke out on my face and my hands began to shake, my chest gasping for air as my mouth gaped, wordless as I slid out of the chair and to the ground. James and Sirius were on their feet in a second, Lily not long behind, their faces horrified. Sirius gathered me against him and stroked my hair, doing all he could during an attack. They were getting to a be a usual, these panic attacks, but neither of us would get used to them.

"Remus! Oh gods, what's wrong with him? Sirius, what's wrong with him? We should call the doctor…"

No, no, Sirius was saying, his attention flickering away from them and back to me swiftly. He shushed me, told me how to breathe, how not to faint. Directions…

My muscles unclenched slowly, my pupils still wide with fear as I looked up at James and Lily's pale faces.

I saw their futures, I could smell the linger of death on them like the stench of rats and writhing of maggots…

I screamed.

* * *

I started awake, my heart thumping wildly in my chest and my body shaking. I sat up, my back straight as I looked around in the darkened room. The window was open, hoping to catch any summer winds, and the half moon hung in the sky like Lily's pregnant belly. Sirius was curled beside me in the white sheets, gaunt and stubble-chinned, the wrinkles a little more pronounced on his face and black tattoos swarming over his skin.

Just a dream…it was just a dream…

A memory…

I slowly got out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants before padding downstairs, my bare feet slapping the wood floors in the silence of the sleeping house. I plucked my cigarette pack off the kitchen table and lit one with the end of my wand, breathing in the calming smoke, wishing I hadn't promised Sirius I would stop drinking. These nightmares were getting out of hand. I could barely tell my waking hours from the sleeping.

My past slammed it's fist against the door of my mind and I was cowering behind it, praying it would hold, just a little longer, that I didn't go mad for just a little longer. It was just last year that I taught at Hogwarts, reveled in the memories of my childhood there, the absolute joy of seeing Harry, all grown and the exact replica of James. There was Lily in those eyes of his, her calm way of walking…

I was overjoyed to see Sirius again, as purely as any wolf would to see its mate again. How the man had escaped Azkaban, I didn't know, but I knew I couldn't kill him when I saw him in the Shrieking Shack, not even to protect Harry and Molly's little son. I hated Peter for ruining whatever chances of redemption Sirius had. Without Peter, there was no way there could ever be a fair trial against Sirius. I was miserable to think of it now.

I lowered my head in my hands and wondered where I might've hid any bottles of liquor in the house or backyard shed when Sirius's scent enveloped me, his arms winding around my shoulders as the smoke from my cigarette trailed with the air currents around my head. He breathed a quiet moment in my ear, a calming presence in my moment of personal terrorism.

"Why can't things just work out for us?" I asked wretchedly, my voice broken in the quiet of the dark room. I could smell the salt of my tears when Sirius licked them off my cheek, his tongue gentle as I leaned toward him.

"They'll work out," he promised quietly. I gave a soft laugh and sucked a fresh mouthful of smoke in. It poured out from my nose and mouth when I spoke again, my voice rough with accusation.

"You're such a fucking liar."

Sirius just shrugged and breathed my second hand smoke, the blue-white clouds like a halo around his midnight hair, his sleepy gray eyes lacking all the childish laughing I loved them for.

Maybe things were better as a tragedy. It made everything we shared sweeter.

I loved the bitter taste on my tongue.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **I am currently working on a sequel. 


End file.
